Friends Bulletin-Pacific and North Pacific Yearly Meetings of the Religious Society of Friends-March 1984

Friends Bulletin

PACIFIC AND NORTH PACIFIC YEARLY MEETINGS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Volume 52, Number 6

MARCH, 1984

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PAGE 98 -MARCH, 1984

FRIENDS BULLETIN

FRIENDS BULLETIN
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NORTH PACIFIC YEARLY MEETING OFFICERS

Presiding Clerk: Margaret Jump, 3027 N.E„ Ainsworth,
Portland, OR 97211

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St., Roseburg, OR 97470

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PACIFIC YEARLY MEETING OFFICERS

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Pasadena, CA 91 1 03

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Irvine, CA 92714

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INTERMOUNTAIN YEARLY MEETING OFFICERS

Presiding Clerk: Frances McAllister,, 526 N. Bertrand,
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Glendale, AZ 95302

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Apt. 427, Phoenix, AZ 85021

“This we know. The earth does not belong to
man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.

All things are connected like the blood which
unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of
the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he
is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the
web, he does to himself.

. . . Even the white man. . . cannot be exempt
from the common destiny. . . One thing we know,
which the white man may one day discover— our
God is the same God. You may think now that
you own him as you wish to own our land; but
you cannot. He is the God of man, and his com-
passion is equal for the red man and the white.

This earth is precious to him, and to harm the
earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. The
white too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all
other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed,
and you will one night suffocate in your own
waste.

. . . So, if we sell you our land, love it as we
have loved it. Care for it as we’ve cared for it. . .
And with all your strength, with all your mind,
with all your heart, preserve it for your children,
and love it. . . as God loves us all.”

— Chief Seattle, leader of the Suquamish
tribe in the Washington Territory1

During Inter-Mountain Yearly Meeting last June,
Marshall Massey, freelance writer from Mt. View
Meeting, Denver, discussed with me his compelling
concern to communicate with Friends the urgency
of our addressing as a spiritual testimony the serious
ecological crises of our times. Beginning with this
issue, we are publishing Marshall’s three-part series,
“The Defense of the Peaceable Kingdom.”

What does God require of us? The ancient ques-
tion. . . the fresh contexts. . .

Shirley Ruth

1 From a speech to mark the transfer of ancestral
Indian Lands to the U.S. government, 1854.
Reprinted with the kind permission of Helen
Michalowski, editor of Active Nonviolence in the
United States, The Power of the People, cooper-
atively published, 1977, p. 7.

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MARCH, 1984 -PAGE 99

The Defense of the Peaceable Kingdom

by Marshall Massey, Mt. View Meeting, Denver

Part One:

The Heads of Cerberus

There seems to be a force within us that blinds us to the outcome of our actions.

Nowhere is this fact more evident than at the two extreme ends of human morality. At the worse end,
the greatest moral crimes, the most unconscionable deeds, are seldom perceived as such by their perpetra-
tors: from the wars of religion in Europe and the slaughter of the Indians on this continent, down to the
present day, the bloodiest hands in Western history have always been attached to brains that fully believed
in the righteousness of their actions. Virtually every political leader seems convinced that the wrongs he
does are justified— anyone who doubts this fact need only look at the behavior of our nation’s recent
presidents.

At the higher end of the spectrum, the person who is unaware of the basic goodness of his actions is
not only proverbial, but a commonplace fact of life.

Awareness of these basic truths is, of course, not limited to Friends. It lies close to the heart of most
fully -lived religions; it is a fundamental axiom of psychology; it is the insight on which political liberalism
is based.

Friends, however, distinguished themselves very early in their history by taking this insight to its logi-
cal conclusion. They saw that what is true of leaders of society and exceptional saints and sinners is true
of ordinary folk as well. As it is true of those we idolize, as it is true of our persecutors, so it is true of
ourselves.

So arose a Quaker practice which, in its ultimate consequences, proved to be revolutionary: the prac-
tice of scrutinizing one’s own everyday behavior— not merely other people’s behavior, or one’s own
behavior in a crisis— to see if those actions which had always seemed so reasonable might not actually be
worthy of reform.

Consider the words with which John Woolman began his first great tract against slavery:

“Customs generally approved and opinions received by youth from their superiors become
like the natural produce of a soil,

—meaning that we do not bother to question or challenge such things—

especially when they are suited to favorite inclinations. But as the judgments of God are with-
out partiality, by which the soul must be tried, it would be the highest wisdom to forego cus-
toms and popular opinions, and try the treasures of the soul by the infallible standard: Truth.”1

Like many another mover and shaker among the early Friends, Woolman arrived by this path at an
impressive variety of insights and testimonies. We can see his use of this discipline, for example, in the
reasoning by which he arrived at his stance on hard drinking:

“. . . Where such. . . whose examples have a strong influence on the minds of others,
adhere to some customs which strongly draw toward the use of more strong liquor than
pure wisdom directs. . . this also, as it hinders the spreading of the spirit of meekness and
strengthens the hands of the more excessive drinkers, is a case to be lamented.”2

We can see it, too, in the case he presented for simplicity of life:

“Oh, that we who declare against wars and acknowledge our trust to be in God only,

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(The Defense of the Peaceable Kingdom: Cont. from page 99)

may walk in the Light and therein examine our foundation and motives in holding great
estates! May we look upon our treasures and the furniture of our houses and the gar-
ments in which we array ourselves and try whether the seeds of war have any nourishment
in these. . .”3

Above all, we can see John Woolman’s approach, his readiness to test every commonly-accepted idea and
custom against the Light, in his extensive writings on slavery. Nor is this surprising, since it was in regard
to slavery, more than on any other subject, that Woolman was anxious to have Friends shake off the bonds
of social conditioning and see things as they truly are:

“As some in most religious societies amongst the English are concerned in importing or
purchasing. . . slaves, and as the professors of Christianity of several other nations do the
like, these circumstances tend to make people less apt to examine the practice so closely as
they would if such a thing had not been, but was now proposed. . .”4

It seems to me that we are accustomed to viewing such statements in terms of the testimonies they
gave rise to: the anti-slavery movement, the practical peace testimony, voluntary simplicity and so forth.
These testimonies are indeed important ones, and perhaps this makes it a bit too easy to attend to the
testimonies and neglect the method that gave them birth.

But if it was the testimonies this method produced— and they also include nonviolent protest, the in-
vention of penitentiaries, equality of the sexes, and the process of decision-making by coming to unity—
that ultimately transformed Anglo-American society, how much then do we owe to this method? If we
neglect this method now, how wise are we?

It appears that this method yielded up to early Friends one other benefit besides the testimonies: a
keen awareness, among those who practiced it, of the nature of that force that blinds us to the effects of
our actions. Woolman had that awareness, and attempted to put it into words several times in his writ-
ings.5 But it was another early Quaker, Edward Burrough, who expressed it most directly:

“. . . Burrough, a contemporary of George Fox and a prominent Quaker minister, consider-
ed that man in the Fall had his vision so dimmed and distorted that he had no clear conception
of nature and its harmony, but that the man who is restored, the spiritual Christian, has a new
and clear vision which leads him to see the creatures as they really are and to treat them as
they should be treated.”6

In modem terms, the essential insight was this: that as members of a society, we live much of our
lives in a waking dream— a dream in which we see, not what truly is, but what our cultural milieu, our
parents and teachers and peers, have encouraged us to see. Since this dream is something we share to a
large extent with one another, it helps to unite us and draw us together (in a manner very different from
the unity of pure spirit) and this makes the dream a hard thing to cast off. But at the same time, since it
is a dream, it conceals from us the harm we do and cuts us off from clarity of judgment.

We have failed to make much of the existence of this dream in our modern accounts of Quaker testi-
monies. Yet, as 1 have described, Quakers actually have a very profound historic testimony concerning it.

It is a testimony, in fact, that far predates Quakerism— for did not Christ command us not to go for the
splinter in our neighbor’s eye until we have removed the plank from our own?

And it is on the existence, and the importance, of this very basic, ancient testimony that everything
I am now going to say is grounded. It seems to me that unless we recognize the power of the collective
dream to deceive us, we may find it all too easy to refuse to believe that a major crisis, urgently in need
of our collective attention, urgently requiring a brand-new Quaker testimony in response, has arisen with-
out our noticing it.

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MARCH, 1984 - PAGE 101

It is clear that a society’s collective dream evolves slowly over time. Here in America, our collective
dream is just about the same today as it was in 1957. But the evils the dream gives rise to can change
much faster than the dream itself, for the same reason that external circumstances can change much faster
than our society’s ability to respond to them.

There have been times in recent years when we Quakers have been wonderfully quick to spot these
new evils and to fashion a response. Such has been the case with our response to the draft in the Vietnam
war, with our response to the needs of refugees from American wars, and with our efforts to challenge the
“reasonableness” of our nation’s possession of nuclear arms.

But these are the sorts of issues to which our traditions sensitize us: issues of war and peace, of cruel-
ty and compassion toward our fellow human beings.

We are not so sensitized to environmental issues, and the result has been that we are now only slightly
more awake to their significance than the average American is. We have certainly noticed that there are
environmental problems; we have responded with Advices and Queries and Guides to Practice; as individ-
uals, many of us have become involved with environmental organizations, or have spoken out on special
concerns within the environmental arena.

But we have failed to see the overall magnitude and urgency of the environmental crisis— a magnitude
and urgency which are at least as great as that of the nuclear arms crisis, and possibly even greater. We
have failed to see that the environmental crisis has a towering spiritual dimension, which must be addres-
sed if the crisis is to be resolved; and we have failed to notice that there is not one spiritual movement
anywhere in the world that has spoken adequately to that spiritual dimension.

In these respects, we have been every bit as deceived by that collective delusion against which John
Woolman spoke as anyone else in our society.

The list of civilizations that have destroyed or severely diminished themselves by their unwise use of
the environment is a long one: it includes, among others, the Sumerians and Babylonians, the Mycenaean
Greeks, the Romans in North Africa, the Mayans of Guatemala, the Easter Islanders, the medieval
Chinese, the Hohokam of Arizona, the inhabitants of India, the inhabitants of the Sahel, and— not so long
ago— the farmers of the American Dust Bowl. Not one of these societies foresaw its danger and avoided
its end. The power of the collective dream claimed each and every one. The danger that confronts us is
not new. Nothing is new but its scale and its extent.

But the scale and the extent are precisely where we Friends have been deceived.

The present environmental crisis is actually three crises, not one. The least of these crises— the crisis
of carrying capacity— is the one that extinguished those civilizations of the past: it is capable this time of
bringing down the curtain on all civilization throughout the globe, bringing on a Dark Age that can be
expected to continue for millenia.

The middle crisis, which is the crisis of extinctions and gene pool destruction , promises to go a bit
further, and to render the end of civilization almost totally irreversible.

The greatest crisis— the threat to our planet’s oxygen factories— will, if not dealt with, literally sterilize
the planet of all life except anaerobic bacteria.

Unlike the threat of nuclear war, the destruction wrought by these crises is not potential. It is happen-
ing right now. It does not hang upon a single bad decision that we may hope will never occur. It is the
cumulative effect of a billion small decisions made by people who believe that their part in the destruc-
tion “doesn’t count.”

And unless the destruction is halted, it now appears that we will pass the point of no return, as regards
each of these three crises, in somewhat under a hundred years. This fact is fairly well established by
ecological studies.

On the other hand .like the nuclear arms crisis, these three environmental crises are totally unnecessary.

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(The Defense of the Peaceable Kingdom: Cont. from page 101)

None of the continuing destruction is actually essential to anyone’s survival, or even to anyone’s prosper-
ity. This fact is well established by economic studies.

These three crises, then, are not only as important— in terms of the stakes— as the nuclear arms crisis
is, they are also issues on which immediate action makes excellent sense. Yet despite this fact— and de-
spite the rapidly-growing organized constituency for environmental concerns throughout the world—
these three crises, unlike the nuclear arms crisis, are not clearly articulated political issues in any country
in the world.

Lesser environmental problems are political issues, yes— and many of them, such as the right use of
public lands, or the control of pesticides, or acid rain, or the protection of endangered species, are impor-
tant parts of the three big crises. But not all the important parts of the three big crises are political issues
at this time. Nor do those parts that are political issues benefit in any way from being considered without
reference to the overall stakes.

And unlike nuclear war, unlike the host of lesser environmental issues, the three big crises are not dis-
cussed by candidates for public office, or debated at any length in the media. No TV special such as The
Day After , no movie such as Testament, has made them an object of concern to the general public. In-
deed, prominent arms freeze activists have from time to time made speeches declaring that if World War
III happens there will be no more environment (which is true), and that therefore nuclear war is the one
real crisis we should all be working on (which is not true, since it ignores the urgency of the three great
environmental crises, but which is widely accepted and believed even within the environmental move-
ment).

The neglect of these three crises in political forums and the media is mirrored by a lack of public aware-
ness. There is no question that environmental issues have become a major public concern in recent years;
poll after poll taken in this country has found that substantial blocks of voters— in many cases, overwhelm-
ing majorities— want to see the environment properly protected regardless of cost,7 and there are numerous
indications that a similar shift of opinion is taking place all over the world.8 The executive director of the
Sierra Club, J. Michael McCloskey, spoke pointedly about the significance of this development in an inter-
view a couple of years back:

“When the Seventies began, the environmental ethos was primarily an outgrowth of the upper-
middle-class and the intelligentsia. At the end of the Seventies, public opinion surveys showed
that our belief system had become pervasive. . . it permeated pretty much all income and educa-
tional levels. And it was prevalent in all regions. . .

“. . . Studies of American political parties have shown that these revolutions in public think-
ing and commitment occur only rarely in American politics and, once set, tend to endure for
decades.”9

Yet the new general environmental awareness does not extend to awareness of the crises. A typical de-
monstration of this came in a national survey of registered voters taken in early 1982 by the Democratic
National Committee. The survey showed that 67% of registered voters want stronger environmental regu-
lations. It revealed that environmentalism is the only issue on which voters think of themselves as being
to the left of the Democratic Party. But, nevertheless, the voters surveyed generally agreed that environ-
mental issues are not among the most important matters this country faces.10 Other surveys have report-
ed comparable findings.

This popular apathy, and not political or media neglect, seems to be the controlling factor. The media
will cover what the public wants to hear about; politicians will act when the public starts to insist. But I
find it highly revealing that when, in 1981 , Paul and Anne Ehrlich published a highly readable, rabble-
rousing book on the extinctions crisis, the book received raves and must-read recommendations from a
number of major publications across the country-and yet the book they wrote, Extinction, is still only

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MARCH, 1984 - PAGE 103

in its first paperback printing; many of the leading bookstores in my city do not even have it in stock;
and most people I have talked to never heard of it.

Why is there this selective blindness? Is it that the three crises are not real? Hardly. Jacques-Yves
Cousteau, the founder of the Cousteau Society, has spoken out about the oxygen-factory crisis and also
about the carrying-capacity crisis, and he is a conservative environmentalist who generally plays down his
concerns in order to reach a broader audience. Both the carrying-capacity crisis and the extinctions crisis
have been extensively explored in environmental literature, and have become major continuing concerns
of such organizations as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the Worldwatch Institute, and Environmen-
tal Action. No serious student of ecology would be likely to deny that all three crises are real and impor-
tant, though plenty of uncertainty exists about the time frames involved.

So what remains? Only the power of the collective dream— which we already know is powerful enough
to have convinced many early Friends that slavery is not really all that bad, and to have convinced an
enormous number of American voters that there is every reason to station Pershing and Cruise missiles
as close to Moscow as possible.

I would suggest that there are values and convictions built into our society and culture and, as Woolman
would put it, well suited to our natural inclinations, that make it very difficult for us to believe that we
could be so extremely dependent on so many different parts of the global ecosystem, or that the parts we
depend on could be so much at our mercy.

These values and convictions might, perhaps, include a conviction that nature is something to triumph
over, and that indeed we have already triumphed and do not need to worry any more. They might also
include a conviction that wilderness is unimportant, insignificant, and nature not worthy of a normal per-
son’s attention. They might include the idea that the world is too big for us to harm permanently. They
might include the decision to grab what you can for yourself, and let the next generation take care of
itself.

To the extent that we fear death, we may be afraid to examine these assumptions too closely, for fear
that they may be wrong.

To the extent that we think our present daily routines, our careers and recreations, are important, we
may not believe we have “time” to worry about anything else. (R. Duncan Fairn had a wonderful re-
sponse to that, which he attributed to A. Neave Brayshaw and which is quoted in the London Faith and
Practice: we have as much time as there is, and when we say we haven’t time we merely mean that we
choose to do other things instead.1 1 But it takes a certain amount of maturing in giving things up to
God to understand what this means; it is not a wisdom most adults seem anxious to acquire.)

We are not well educated about nature in this society. Our education generally consists of a few lessons
in elementary school, perhaps a course in high school biology, plus whatever we pick up from newspapers
and television. Most of us live in suburbs, where grass, flowers, shrubs and trees, birds, squirrels and bees
are employed to give us the illusion of a lush, intact ecosystem without the fuss and bother of the reality.
Most of the rest of us live in cities. Nearly all of us spend most of our time within four walls, with our
attention directed either to artifacts or to ideas; even outdoors we have no urgent reason to understand
the world in which we move.

This way of life perpetuates our ignorance, and encourages us to underestimate the importance of the
environmental crisis. Is it any wonder, then, that while a 1982 poll of Americans found that the great
majority want stronger environmental safeguards, the same poll found that 45% think pollution control
measures are an unfair burden on industry.12 Is it any surprise that our nation’s most respected econo-
mists still believe, with few exceptions, that our environmental problems are irrevelant to predictions of
what the economy will look like in ten years? As Paul Ehrlich has written, “the problem probably is
that economists have stared too long at the. . . standard economics texts.”13 We form our ideas of the
importance of the environment, not from any actual experience, but from listening to one another— or

(Continued on page 104)

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(The Defense of the Peaceable Kingdom: Cont. from page 103)

from sheer imagination: as no less a personage than Ronald Reagan has said, “Trees cause pollution.”

This, then, is the situation in which ecological and biological experts, with some part-time aid from
a few concerned organizations, have been attempting to alert the world to the magnitude of the environ-
mental crises. The emphasis in their efforts has been on presenting the facts. But the facts, the three
crises, are only Cerberus’ heads; it is his body, our collective dream, our collective refusal to see, that
gives the three heads their existence. The experts and the organizations have failed to address the nature
of the entire beast. And as a result, though they have added fuel to the general concern about pollution,
they have failed to get their essential message across. The power of the dream has overwhelmed them.

To address the dream-body of Cerberus is a spiritual task, as Woolman and Burrough and a host of
other Friends understood very well. It is for this reason that the presence of Quakers as a body , a new
and coherent Friends’ testimony, is now so urgently required.

FOOTNOTES

1 . John Woolman, “Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes.” In Phillips P. Moulton, ed.,

The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 198.

2. “The Journal of John Woolman,” loc. cit. , p. 54.

3. John Woolman, “Plea for the Poor,” loc. cit. , p. 255.

4. John Woolman, “Considerations on Keeping Negroes: Part Second,” loc. cit., pp. 21 1-2.

5. As for example in his essay, “On Loving our Neighbors as Ourselves”:

“People may have no Intention to oppress, yet by entering on expensive Ways of Life,
their Minds may be so entangled therein, and so engag’d to support expensive Customs,
as to be estranged from the pure sympathizing Spirit.”

(In Amelia Mott Gummere, ed., The Journal and Essays of John Woolman (New York: Macmillan,
1922), pp. 489ff.; quoted in Mildred Binns Young, Woolman and Blake, Prophets for Today
(Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill Publications, 1971), pp. 18-9.)

6. Howard H. Brinton, Quaker Journals : Varieties of Religious Experience Among Friends (Walling-
ford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill Publications, 1972), p. 88.

7. In 1981 , a New York Times/ CBS News poll found that “more than two out of three people. . .

[agree] that ‘we need to maintain present environmental laws in order to preserve the environment
for future generations.’ ” (“Econotes,” Environmental Action, Nov. 1981, p. 8.)

In 1982, a poll commissioned by the Continental Group showed that 60% of the general American
public “favors continued environmental clean-up, even if companies have to charge more for their
products.” (“Econotes,” Environmental Action , Feb. 1983, p. 5.)

In April, 1983, a New York 77raes/CBS News poll found that 58% of Americans believe “protect-
ing the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high and con-
tinuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost.” (Deborah Baldwin, “Play-
ing Politics with Pollution,” Common Cause, May/June 1983, p. 15.)

8. The rise of the Green Parties of Australia and Europe is one sign. Another is the fact that, at inter-
national conferences such as the 1982 World Congress on National Parks, it has increasingly been
the nations of the third world— not those of the first or second— that have taken the lead in the
search for effective conservation strategies.

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MARCH, 1984 - PAGE 105

9. Frances Gendlin, “A Talk with Mike McCloskey,” Sierra , March/April 1982, p. 37.

10. “Econotes,” Environmental Action, April 1982, p. 4.

1 1 . London Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, Christian faith and practice in the
experience of the Society of Friends (1960, 1966), p. 309.

12. “Econotes,” Environmental Action, Feb. 1983, p. 5.

13. Paul R. Ehrlich, “An Ecologist Standing Up Among Seated Social Scientists,” CoEvolution
Quarterly No. 31, Fall 1981, p. 29.

Announcements

PYM’s War Tax Alternative Fund

Edith Cole, Clerk of Pacific Yearly Meeting’s
Peace Committee, reminds Friends before April 15
that the Yearly Meeting has an alternative fund for
war taxes not paid to IRS. At the end of 1983 it
had over $3000 on deposit, currently drawing 9 lA%
interest for peace work. The Committee administers
this fund, which is handled by our treasurers. Those
interested can write Virginia Croninger for a deposi-
tor’s agreement or send a deposit. Checks should
be made to PYM and designated “War Tax Alterna-
tive Fund.” Virginia’s current address is 3951
Camino Calma, San Diego, CA 92122.

Friends who have been refusing all or part of
the new 3% federal tax on telephone service— raised
last year 200% (who said no tax increases!)— may
prefer to deposit these monthly amounts in larger
totals once or twice a year.

Southwest USA Quaker Youth Pilgrimage:

July 6 - August 4, 1984

The FWCC Section of the Americas is sponsor-
ing a Southwest USA Quaker Youth Pilgrimage
July 6 - August 4, 1984. This four-week experience
will involve an inward search of Quaker values,
awareness of cross-cultural spiritual resources, and
bi-lingual approaches to solving problems.

The Pilgrimage is open to high school juniors
and seniors, ages approximately 16 to 18 with
interest in speaking Spanish preferred. The cost is
about $500 per person plus transportation to and
from Albuquerque, NM. Some scholarship funds
are available, if needed.

For an application and more information, write
to: Johan Maurer, FWCC, P.O. Box 1797,
Richmond, IN 47374.

Used Book Store on West Coast Specializes in
Quaker Books

Maria and Bob Baird, Corvallis Friends, invite
inquiries from interested Friends regarding buying
or selling Quaker books from their recently acquir-
ed bookstore. For a list of current selections,
write The Book Bin, Attn. QBL, 351 NW Jackson,
Corvallis, OR 97330.

Quaker Center Retreat-Conference: “Peacemaking
1984 - 2000— What Will Be Required of Us?”

Ben Lomond Quaker Center invites peace
activists and others who want to deepen their com-
mitment to long-range peacemaking to a three-day
retreat-conference Easter Weekend, April 19 - 22,
1984.

Workshop leaders will be Barbara Graves, Earle
Reynolds, Ira Sandperl and Ben Seaver.

Contact hosts, Quaker Center, for registration
information: P.O. Box 686, Ben Lomond, CA 95005.

Our Friend Floyd Schmoe’s latest book, Why Is
Man That Thou Abidest Him (sequel to his earlier
What Is Man That Thou Art Mindful of Him) was
published late last year and is available from Floyd
at 12016 - 87th Ave. NE, Kirkland, WA 98033 for
$6.75, postage included. “The author reminds us
of our duties to God, to ourselves, our neighbors
and the earth which sustains us.” (Fr. William
Treacy)

Berkeley Meeting seeks hosts/caretakers for
Quaker House available late March/ April. Apply
to John Mackinney, Clerk, Ministry and Oversight,
2151 Vine Street, Berkeley, CA 94709.

Catherine Jolly, Berkeley Meeting

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Women’s Peace Demonstration October 29, 1983, Comiso, Sicily

Discovering Power

by Catherine Jolly, Berkeley Meeting Young Friend

There is a womyn’s peace camp at the gates of
the Greenham Common American military base,
one of two bases in England receiving first-strike
Cruise missiles. The camp has been well-publicized
for over two years, its activists brave and committed,
so many people assume it is well-organized. That
it is not is one of the first lessons I learned during
my journey in Europe last fall, a journey which cen-
tered around the womyn’s peace movement.

I arrived at Greenham peace camp very excited
by my place of pilgrimage, and expecting to find
incredibly strong, dynamic womyn, whom I would
simply watch in wonder for the duration of my visit.
My vision was only partially true. For the first week
I was withdrawn, passive, and not very happy, until

I finally realized that if I was to learn anything, I
would have to be an active participant/creator of
what was possible there. So I started to open up
and have conversations, and spent a little less time
washing dishes and collecting firewood.

Before the end of my first visit in September, I
had facilitated a workshop with a Danish friend
called “Exploring Ideas for Direct Action.” We
got the idea from observing in ourselves a tendency
to absorb others’ ideas and visions passively instead
of seeing that we, too, could conceive workable
ideas. The workshop’s purpose was to unbind that
process. I had doubts, but talked myself into do-
ing it by saying that even if the “experienced
Greenham Womyn” did not need such a workshop,
there were always others arriving, like myself, who
might find it useful. In the end though, it was
enthusiastically received by many, including several

FRIENDS BULLETIN

MARCH, 1984 - PAGE 107

who had lived there for months. I learned that there
was room in the community for me and my perspec-
tives.

I know now that offering a workshop of that
kind would have been impossible in a less internally-
trusting political group. I remember someone say-
ing, “There are as many possibilities for actions as
there are womyn’s minds.” At Greenham, each per-
son is allowed her space and creativity, so long as
she supports the nonviolent, womyn-only premises
of the camp. The result is a fully alive and growing
community which is the basis for endlessly diverse
actions. To illustrate, I will describe three that are
very different.

For a period of three weeks, womyn got up by
7:00 every morning to hold signs for workers to
read as they drove into the base. The signs had dif-
ferent messages each day, such as “We don’t want
you out of a job, just out of the base (and wouldn’t
you rather be doing something else?)” At first the
workers ignored the womyn and their signs, but
gradually trust developed. Before two weeks were
up, workers would roll down their windows to look
for them, and wave and smile.

Many, many times womyn have gone into the
base to spray-paint messages, sabotage machinery,
do rituals, and otherwise reclaim that which once
belonged to British people as common land. One
night nine womyn entered the base, made their way
to the center of the airstrip, found a plane, and be-
gan to spray-paint it with a dragon. They were
caught before they had finished, but later found
out that they had painted a US spy plane called
the Blackbird, destroyed its radar-resistant shield-
ing and caused over a million dollars worth of
damage. (Charges against them were dropped, be-
cause of the embarrassment the whole situation
would have brought to the US government.)

In February of 1983, three snakes (small groups
of womyn in snake costumes) named Sybil, Rosie,
and Cecily went through a gap (opened by the
campers) in the fence. They slithered around the
runway, past officers, workers, and American kids,
before they were finally arrested. (Charges against
them were dropped as well.)

There is no such thing as a typical action at
Greenham. I am not saying that there is no conflict,

but that womyn trust each other to do what they
feel is right.

Greenham Common Womyn’s Peace Camp has
always had a quality of spontaneity. It started as
a walk from Wales to Greenham by forty people,
who were outraged that they had had no voice in
NATO’s decision to deploy Cruise missiles. The
walkers got very little publicity along the way and
were determined to be heard, so they chained
themselves to the fence, demanding a media con-
ference with the minister of defense. This brought
more media, interested people began to arrive, and
tents were pitched. That was September, 1981, and
womyn have lived and worked outside the gates of
the US Air Force Base every since.

The impact of the camp has been huge. Before
the Cruise system is considered “operational” by
the US military, it must do test-runs on launcher
vehicles around the countryside within a hundred
miles of the base. So far (at the time of this writing)
this has been impossible because of the presence of
the womyn and their supporters all over England.
There are other signs that the womyn are making
things difficult for the military presence, such as
its ever-expanding (but ever-penetrable) security
system, and an order for all factories to stop pro-
ducing boltcutters of the size camp womyn used
to cut the fence. But certainly the most important—
and irreversible— effect has been that womyn all over
the world have been empowered by seeing what
they can do together.

One of the first things I noticed about Greenham
Peace Camp participants is that they are not afraid
to speak, sing and act on their anger. They see
authoritarian individuals and systems threatening
to destroy everything they cherish, which makes
them afraid and angry. They begin from a know-
ledge of what must change, not from questions
about what they can do. When we allow ourselves
to feel rage, a potent energy is released. Rage
(rightly used) gives us a fiery spirit with which to
build communities, empower others, and challenge
authority. It gives us a sharp eye that sees through
the veils of authority, which until now made us
think authority too vague to be understood or con-
quered. I am not advocating an “us-and-them”
attitude, but rather, an attitude that asks, “How
(Continued on page 108)

PAGE 108 — MARCH, 1984

FRIENDS BULLETIN

(Discovering Power: Cont. from page 107)
can we reach into those destructive systems and
individuals? Where are their weak spots? What is
the nature of their power— the power of money and
exploitation? What is the nature of our power— the
power that supports life?”

I gained a sense of these two kinds of power from
two simple experiences. I participated in a small
blockade in September with twelve other womyn,
and the first vehicle to approach us was a large truck.
The driver tried to intimidate us by driving until he
was two feet away from our faces. My gaze dropped
from the windshield to the bumper, and I wondered,
“Will the truck stop or not?”

It wasn’t until later in the day that the full im-
pact of this experience hit me. I was furious with
myself for having forgotten that the truck was not
my enemy, that it was nothing without the driver
(who was little threat without his truck). I had
allowed myself to get preoccupied with the machine-
ry as if it had a will of its own. If I had maintained
eye contact, or mind contact, with the driver, I
would have been much safer and stronger. (I re-
member a similar sense of victimization when the
draft registration laws were put into effect. I felt
the laws were floating down upon us from some
faceless, unknown authority. We would try to
understand why “they” did what they did, what
their next step would be, but I felt like a marionette
trying to guess what the face of its puppeteer look-
ed like.)

In another experience the depth of my own
power was realized. One night at the camp, womyn
got a message from a man from the nearby town of
Newbury that groups of men in three separate pubs
were making plans to “do the camp in once and for
all.” I was already feeling shaky and vulnerable
(since fires had been set to two of the camps the
night before), and Theresa was the only other
camper there. She suggested we do a ritual
together to protect ourselves and gather strength.

We sat facing each other with a candle lit between
us, making a small circle within joined hands. We
visualized a light that grew in the space between
us, and moved to a space within ourselves, out to
those we love, out to painful places in the world,
and finally to those who would hurt us. During

this ritual, cars drove up, men got out and were
walking around the camp. Two of them passed us
at a distance of about ten feet, without even seem-
ing to see us. Within minutes they all disappeared
and we were left in peace for the rest of the night.

The first experience showed me the nature of
mechanical, patriarchal power— the will to do vio-
lence from a distance; and it showed me how easy
it is to be victimized in my forgetting to look the
driver in the eye. The second experience showed
me the nature of my own, inner power.

I learned from Greenham that it is possible to
remain centered in the face of great danger without
losing awareness of the danger. Once in touch with
a place of inner power, we can move outward,
piercing all false authority to its mechanical heart,
and reclaim our connection to life and earth. It
may be harder for us to do that in this country, in
“the belly of the beast.” It takes tremendous dis-
cipline and an especially large capacity for love and
trust. But if we remember our love for the planet,
nothing will stop us from rediscovering our bond
to her.

Book Review

by Ben Seaver, San Francisco Meeting

Middle East Mission: The Story of a Major
Bid for Peace in the Time of Nasser and
Ben-Gurion, by Elmore Jackson, published by
W.W. Norton and Co., 1 15 pages. Price $12.95

This small book tells a previously unpublished
story which reveals that Sadat’s peace initiative
toward Israel had a precedent in Egyptian policy
under Nasser, and that Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy
was tried by a Quaker on a miniature scale back in
1955.

The American Friends Service Committee’s repu-
tation with both Arabs and Jews was of the highest.
Along with the British Friends, AFSC had been

FRIENDS BULLETIN

MARCH, 1984 - PAGE 109

awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948 after having
been heavily involved in helping Jewish refugees
from Nazi Germany and Arab refugees in Israel.
American Friends were part of the ecumenical
action which led to a cease-fire in Jerusalem in
1948, and Clarence Pickett, then National Execu-
tive Secretary of the AFSC, was actually invited
to become a municipal commissioner in Jerusalem,
with the specific task of maintaining close contact
with both Jews and Arabs to make the joint admin-
istration of the city work. The United Nations had
invited the AFSC to manage the refugee program
for 200,000 Arabs in the Gaza Strip, which was
under Egyptian governance. Near the Gaza Strip
in the Negev 3,000 Egyptian soldiers were surround-
ed by Israeli forces. Colonel Nasser was Chief of
Staff in this enclave. Friends were successful in
negotiating for the admission of food through
Israeli and Egyptian lines for distribution to civil-
ians in the Egyptian-held enclave.

As a result of all this, during the early 1950’s
Israeli officials on several occasions approached
Friends to help create an informal understanding
between Israel and Egypt. Friends were reluctant
to undertake such a mission without any encourage-
ment from the other side. Egypt’s internal affairs
were in turmoil. In 1952 King Farouk was forced
to abdicate and fled the country, and it was not
until 1954 that Nasser became Prime Minister. He
was being pushed by his generals to build up Egypt’s
armaments. His negotiations with the West resulted
only in a trickle of help. He was reluctant to turn
to the communist countries for arms, realizing the
political costs of such a move. If Egypt could come
to some accomodation with Israel, the pressure for
arms would be considerably moderated.

Accordingly, in 1955 the Egyptian Ambassador
to the U.S. approached Friends to act as an inter-
mediary to explore with Israel the terms of a peace
settlement. After many consultations to ensure
that Nasser himself favored the move, that the
Israelis would welcome the approach, and that our
State Department had no objections, Friends agreed
to undertake the negotiations.

Elmore Jackson, then in charge of the Quaker
Program at the U.N. in New York was chosen as the
Quaker negotiator, and I can imagine no one more

suited by experience and temperament. Elmore
Jackson, besides his many years of work at the U.N.,
had been part of a U.N. negotiating team trying to
bring India and Pakistan into agreement over
Kashmir. Also, I once saw him defuse a near riotous
assemblage of Israeli and Arab students by rephras-
ing their hottest and most controversial statements
in a way that took all the heat out of them. By the
end of the evening the Arab and Israeli students
were exchanging addresses and phone numbers and
promising to keep in touch.

In the summer of 1955 Elmore Jackson flew to
the Middle East. For the next two months he shut-
tled back and forth between Israel and Egypt. From
the beginning, Palestinian guerrilla action from the
Gaza Strip and heavy Israeli attacks on the Egyptian
garrison there threatened to end all negotiations.

In spite of these unfavorable circumstances some
progress was made. Israel seemed prepared to
accept 100,000 refugees back to reunite families,
and to offer some compensation for those who did
not return. There was even talk of a face to face
meeting between Nasser and Ben-Gurion, but hostile
actions continued on both sides, making impossible
any public move toward peace. Finally the negoti-
ations petered out and by the end of September
the Egyptian-Czech arms supply accord was
announced.

Today we have the Camp David agreement
between Egypt and Israel, but general peace in the
area seems further away than ever. No one talks
any longer of a return of some refugees and com-
pensation for others. Israel now occupies the West
Bank as well as the Gaza Strip and gives no evidence
that this is other than a permanent occupation.

The situation has hardened in many complicated
ways, and present Israeli leadership will not or can-
not consider the sort of compromises which may
be necessary for peace. The author hopes that this
story of early negotiations for peace will help
present day peace efforts, but it is hard to imagine
how this can be. What was difficult in 1955 now
seems to have moved several notches toward the
impossible.

PAGE 110 — MARCH, 1984

FRIENDS BULLETIN

Friends Concerns for Central America

by Jeanne Lohmann, Associate Editor

Within our three Yearly Meetings the range of energetic efforts on behalf of Central American refugees
is encouraging. There is no way for Friends Bulletin to share all the stories in Meeting newsletters. We
can give only samples, and urge Friends to be in touch with one another.

Eugene Meeting was the first group in Oregon to offer public sanctuary, and on November 5th, opened
its doors to a refugee family from El Salvador. The project is well planned and publicized, in open opposi-
tion to our government’s policy. For five weeks the “Martinez” family lived in the social wing of the
Meetinghouse. They are now on their own in the community, continuing to receive help from Friends,
from other churches and secular agencies. Funds have been sent to relatives in El Salvador and Mexico.

In July, Davis Meeting declared sanctuary, and Friends “adopted” a young man. “We act out of obedi-
ence to the light of our faith, out of compassion. . . and out of actively seeking justice where current
policies promote oppression and persecution.” They have helped groups of families move north on the
“underground railway,” and refugees have stopped with Friends. A dinner was planned to welcome and
honor the city’s Central American families, and the larger religious community in Davis prepared a hand-
book on sanctuary to assist those offering support and hospitality.

Redwood Forest approved offering sanctuary “with the full knowledge that any members of Meeting
are acting as agents of the Meeting, that Meeting is part of such action, and that if one member is prose-
cuted, all should be.”

Santa Monica approved use of the Meetinghouse as weekend sanctuary in emergencies. Monthly contri-
butions are made to the AFSC Project for Central American refugees. A meeting was held with friends
from El Salvador, who told of experiences in their home country and showed many photographs. They
felt Friends could be helpful through letters urging the release of political prisoners, by pressures on our
Congress, and by simply talking to neighbors and friends, since media coverage is inadequate.

Palo Alto implemented its minute on sanctuary by forming a subcommittee to help an individual mem-
ber meet refugee needs. The Meeting receives contributions for emergency housing and the money is
given to a larger fund administered by the South Bay Coalition on Sanctuary.

Strawberry Creek, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, San Francisco and other meetings belong to larger ecumeni-
cal coalition or covenant groups in their localities. “Strawberries” raised bond money to secure the
release of a detained refugee.

Eastside approved willingness to place a lien on Meeting property for the purpose of securing bail for
El Salvadoran refugees.

Friends in Mountain View Meeting initiated a letter dialogue with Governor Lamm about his state-
ments on immigration policies.

Visalia raised funds for the community’s Central American Refugee Effort, and aims to help meet
needs in their own county for food, short term shelter, emergency funding.

Claremont reports that funds are being used “right along” from their Fund for Sanctuary Project, and
reminds Friends to keep contributing.

Santa Fe extended help to refugees coming through their area. Friends were interviewed in the news-
paper for an issue on Central America.

Multnomah reminds us of the AFSC’s new Study/ Reflection/Action Guide on Central America,
specifically designed for use by religious groups in the northwest.

Santa Barbara affirmed support for sanctuary offered by the local Unitarian Church, and offered time,
money, supplies.

Boulder Friends are establishing closer ties with the Monte Verde Meeting in Costa Rica through an
exchange of newsletters. They published a short history of Monte Verde Friends, and heard firsthand
reports of visits to Central America.

FRIENDS BULLETIN

MARCH, 1984 -PAGE 111

Albuquerque’s Minute reads, in part:

We reject the use of violence to resolve conflict. We oppose U.S. military and covert interven-
tion in Central America and believe that our government’s actions are responsible in part for forc-
ing many. . . to leave their homelands. Therefore:

We encourage Friends who are so moved to lovingly confront employees of agencies. . .

We commend and offer our spiritual and material resources as a Meeting to those among
us who assist Central American refugees. . .

Santa Cruz Meeting approved support of an existing job network in the community, individual Friends
offer skills in communicating across language barriers. A Minute on Openness was adopted: We are “con-
cerned to find the proper balance between open public witness to the truth and a due regard for the pro-
tection of those under our care, in our aid to refugees from Central America. . . We shall obey the command-
ment not to let our left hand know what our right is doing (Matt. 6:3). . . and we pledge. . . to protect
those who seek sanctuary with us. . . deflecting the force of. . . law toward our persons. . .”

FRIENDS AROUND THE WORLD

by Madge Seaver, San Francisco Meeting

AUSTRALIA

Adelaide Friends raise about $2,000 every month
for service work inside and outside Australia al-
though the Meeting has only about 150 members.
They get the money from their Quaker Shop which
began in 1968 as an overgrown Jumble Sale, and
now functions as a very special Quaker witness
providing a kindly meeting place, window shop-
ping and cheap purchases for many people.

David Purnell, Secretary, Australia Yearly
Meeting, writes about a class he gives in peace edu-
cation in a secondary school in Canberra: “The
course consisted of 12 sessions, each of IVi hours.
The content was designed to move from internal
to external conflict, from the immediate to the
worldwide environment. Role plays, discussions,
exercises, verbal and written, were all used to build
the group (12 students, a good size for this).

There was a sense of hope rather than despair
in the written evaluations the students did at the
end of the course.”

A recent issue of the Australian Friend contains
an insert of a clear, brief, and courteous letter to
the Commissioner for Taxes explaining why the
writer intends to divert the percentage of income
tax which would be applied to defense projects,
either to a Peace Trust set up by the Australian
government, or to some other suitable institution,
such as a Peace Research Institute.

CANADA

Lena Ullman, widow of Richard Ullman, a philos-
opher and author of Friends and Truth , gave the
Sunderland P. Gardner lecture at Canadian Yearly
Meeting in 1983. The title of her lecture is Born
to Be a Woman. Lena Ullman, of Alsatian birth,
tells the story of her life and her marriage to
Richard Ullmann. Since her husband was of Jewish
ancestry, he was imprisoned in Buchenwald until
Friends in England intervened on his behalf to
bring him to Woodbrooke. Lena’s account of her
own religious nurture includes a reference to her
confusion at the beginning of the first World War
when children were praying for victory in the war
and the safety of their soldiers. “One evening I
became resolute. It was not my problem to solve,
but God would do the right thing. Therefore no
more childish prayers, no more lists of people who
needed protection, but had not Jesus given us only
one prayer? So I started quite slowly, this time in
German, the Lord’s Prayer and pondered over each
sentence and felt content, ready to sleep. And
this custom I kept all through my life. Without
it there was no sleep. . . After a good and healthy
Lord’s Prayer your conscience starts working about
what you did during the day. You become more
lenient and understanding to other people, you
decide to avoid special temptations and then try
to be repentant to your dear ones, should there
have been arguments.”

(Continued on page 111)

PAGE 112 -MARCH, 1984

FRIENDS BULLETIN

ENGLAND

Some Friends in England are making a tapestry

in the same style as the Bayeux tapestry. Whereas
the latter is about the Norman conquest, the con-
temporary tapestry will tell Quaker history from
George Fox to the present day. The background
is hand-woven wool.

The Latin American Working Group of Quaker
Peace and Service writes of their “grave concern
over the present situation in Grenada. . . it is clear
that the invasion by the U.S. and Caribbean troops
of a sovereign Commonwealth state is contrary to
international law and to the charter of the U.N.

We deeply regret this violation of the law and the
consequent loss of life.”

EUROPE

Vienna Friends Peace Initiative. In reply to a
letter to President Reagan, members of Vienna
Monthly Meeting met with an official of the U.S.
Embassy in November to discuss peace issues.
Arthur Hinton writes from Vienna: “The atmo-
sphere of our discussion was friendly.

We emphasized the necessity of building up
trust between the U.S. A. and the U.S.S.R. and
expressed our concern that many statements by
American leaders were so hostile towards Russia
that they could only destroy trust.

A letter on similar lines to that sent to President
Reagan has been sent to Mr. Andropov, and we
wonder if we shall receive any response.”

INDIA

Partap C. Aggarwal tells of an experience with
the rice crop in Rasulia. The crop flourished until
September when two kinds of worms attacked the
rice plants. The fields turned yellow and the
workers considered whether to spray insecticides.
But these chemicals remain in the soil a long time
to poison people and animals.

“Then, about the end of September, the paddy
began to turn green again. Our hopes revived. . .
The birds had come to our rescue— birds in large
numbers and all sizes. The egrets waded in the
fields devouring larvae. The munias arrived in
great flocks. So tiny that a rice stem barely bends
under their weight, they have enormous appetites.
Our crop was saved!”

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On the Termination of Species

The awkward great auk could swim like a fish
But it wasn’t equipped to fly
And an egg a year was the most it could wish
From its efforts to multiply.

Nevertheless it held its own
Till someone discerned a distinct
Advantage (cash) in the feathers grown
By the awkward great auk, now extinct.

The passenger pigeon was better equipped,

With swift wings and an elegant tail
That bore it aloft with ease as it slipped
Through the trees, not infertile or frail.

The flight of a flock made a roar as it passed
Till man, in his aspect of mob,

Battered them down; they failed to outlast
This strange passion for overgrown squab.

The preservers, the Cincinnati Zoo,

The Audubon groups and the rest,

Brought too little too late and could not undo
The work of the human pest.

If they’re smart, they’ll start mounting specimens now
To keep with these on the shelf,

Of the bird man insists he’ll no longer allow
To continue existing: himself.

—William H. Matchett, University Meeting

[Reprinted, with permission, from Water Ouzel and
other poems, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1955.]